The Hurt Person Who Helps People

How To Escape Identity Patterns That Haunt You And Turn Pain Into Purpose

**Note: This piece draws from my original ideas, research, hooks, and metaphors. For editing and some wording, I’ve used AI tools trained on my own books and style, always blending technology with my hands-on curation and oversight. Thank you for being here—Jade.

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You wake up on January 1st with that familiar mix of hope and dread.

New journal. New planner. New program. Same you.

You write down the habits again. Eat better. Spend less. Stop choosing people who treat you like a side quest in their own drama.

By February, the list has teeth marks and coffee stains. Your behaviors snap back to baseline, like a rubber band that never actually broke. You start wondering if this is just… who you are. The anxious eater. The broke achiever. The over-giver in relationships.

Here is the part no one told you.

You do not have a habit problem.
You have an identity problem.

And that identity was built in rooms you barely remember, by a version of you who did not yet have wisdom, context, or power. Those decisions are still running the show. That old architecture is what I call MUD… misguided, unconscious decisions.

If you feel haunted by the same patterns year after year, it is not because you are weak. It is because your nervous system is still loyal to an old self.

The work now is not “try harder.”
The work is “become someone new… on purpose.”

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The Big Idea

Most self-help tries to change what you do.

More discipline. More hacks. More information.

But your actions are downstream from something much deeper: your identity structure. The stories you hold about who you are. The meanings you attached to pain. The invisible rules running in the background like an old operating system.

In cognitive and behavioral science, these are called core beliefs or schemas… templates that shape how you interpret the world and what you think is possible for you. [RESEARCH HERE]

In the Next Level Human model, I call the distorted versions of these stories MUD… misguided, unconscious decisions.

MUD is the layer of identity that keeps you looping.

Essentia is the layer of identity that frees you, the fusion of your unique nature, your earned wisdom, and the work you choose to do in the world.

The big idea is simple and brutal:

Until you alchemize your MUD into Essentia, your habits will keep orbiting the same identity set point. Change that identity, and the habits start to follow. Research on habit formation and self-concept backs this up… behavior is more stable when it aligns with how you see yourself. [RESEARCH HERE]

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The Breakdown

Let’s walk this through in human terms.

The Conditioning Phase: Where Your Identity Was Written For You

From birth into early adulthood, your brain is a sponge with no filter.

You watch how your parents handle money, food, conflict, affection. You absorb their tone, their fear, their silence. You interpret it all with a child’s brain, then turn those interpretations into rules about life. Cognitive therapy research has been saying this for decades… early experiences shape underlying beliefs that filter everything you see. [RESEARCH HERE]

Dad comes home stressed and snaps at you.
You do not see an overwhelmed adult with bills and cortisol.
You feel, “I am bad,” or “Men are dangerous,” or “Anger is what power looks like.”

Those are not “facts.”
They are decisions, made by a younger you with incomplete information.

That is what makes MUD misguided.
It was the best your nervous system could do at the time, but it was built without context, wisdom, or consent.

Then it gets worse.

MUD: Misguided, Unconscious Decisions

MUD has three defining features.

It is misguided because it was assembled when you did not yet understand what was really happening.

It is unconscious because you usually do not know these beliefs are even there. You just feel pulled into the same reactions over and over… freezing in conflict, overeating when you are lonely, saying yes when every cell is screaming no. This fits with what both classic CBT and modern schema work describe as automatic, schema-driven patterns.

And it is a decision because at some point, even if you do not remember it, a part of you chose a story:

“I’m on my own.”
“I am too much.”
“I don’t matter unless I perform.”

Left unseen, that mud hardens. At first it is a puddle you could wash off. Eventually it becomes clay. If you stay in it long enough, it turns to cement. You start saying things like, “That’s just who I am,” as if it were in your DNA instead of your history.

This is what Jung was pointing to with the idea that whatever stays unconscious shows up in your life as “fate.” A version of this sentiment is widely attributed to him, even though the exact wording is debated.

The Backpack: Villain, Victim, Or Victor

Now imagine all of that pain and confusion as a backpack full of bricks. Every betrayal, every humiliation, every time you felt invisible, every time you felt too loud… another brick.

You do not get to take the backpack off. Being human means you carry it.

But you do get to decide how.

There are three basic ways people carry that backpack. Only one of them leads out of the conditioning phase.

The Villain

Some people become the villain.
The hurt person who hurts people.
They hurl bricks at anyone who gets close. They attack, manipulate, control, pre-emptively wound because to them, offense feels safer than defense.

The Victim

Others become the victim.
The hurt person who keeps hurting themselves.
They sit down with the backpack, turning each brick over in their hands again and again. “Look how heavy this is. Look how unfair this is. Look what they did to me.” That is not weakness, it is simply where healing often starts… but many people never leave this stage.

The Victor (Hero)

Then there is the third path: the victor.

The hurt person who helps.

The victor still feels the weight. They do not sugarcoat their trauma or bypass their rage. But they start asking new questions.

“What did this teach me?”
“How did this grow me?”
“Who else is carrying a backpack like this… and how can what I learned make their journey easier?”

At that point, the bricks do not disappear. They get repurposed. They become building material. They also become a lighter load to bear.

This is the doorway into the awakening phase.

Awakening: From “Why Me” To “What Now”

Awakening is not some blissed-out spiritual highlight reel. It is that bleak middle chapter where you get sick of your own patterns, and instead of blaming the universe… or your ex or your parents… you finally walk into the mirror.

You start to see two things very clearly.

First, you are absolutely unique. There has never been another nervous system, history, genetic code, personality mix, and lived set of bricks exactly like yours… and there never will be again.

Second, that uniqueness comes with a task.

You have a specific kind of work that only you can do in the way you can do it. Other people may teach the same concepts, share the same tools, run the same type of business… but there are humans on this planet who can only hear it from you. That idea of a personal life story that integrates your past wounds and future contribution is very close to what narrative identity research describes… we construct stories about who we are, and those stories then shape our behavior and wellbeing. [RESEARCH HERE]

This is where Essentia starts to come online.

Essentia is not a brand slogan. It is the living combination of three things:

Your essential nature… the raw material you came in with. Genetics. Temperament. The way you naturally see and move through the world.

Your earned wisdom… the lessons hiding inside your bricks. The patterns you have lived, broken, and learned from.

Your intentional purpose… the work you choose to do with all of that, on purpose, in service to something bigger than your own comfort.

When those three fuse, you stop asking “Do I have a purpose?” and start realizing, “My whole life has been training for it.”

Purpose As Alchemized Pain

Most people chase passion.

They want work, love, and projects that feel exciting. There is nothing wrong with that, but passion is about interests. It depends on context. It tends to fade when things get hard.

Meaning goes a layer deeper. It comes from lived experience… the moments that change you, the people you show up for, the responsibilities that pull something bigger out of you.

Purpose is what happens when you stop outsourcing passion and meaning to circumstances, and start generating them from inside your Essentia.

Put simply:

Purpose is your deepest wounds, creatively applied to help other people.

Every breakup you barely survived.
Every addiction you wrestled.
Every time your body felt like an enemy.
Every year you spent performing for love.

Those bricks become curriculum.

You do not have to turn it into a business or a brand. Helping one person counts. Telling the truth in one conversation counts. But when you consistently move in the direction of “hurt person who helps,” the nervous system gets a new job description.

You are not just surviving your story. You are using it.

That is identity alchemy.

Being, Not Just Doing

Now we can finally talk about habits.

Most behavior change advice lives out here on the surface. Plan your meals. Track your spending. Use better communication tools.

Those are useful. They are just not enough.

Behavior science is clear that identity and self-concept play a major role in which habits stick. When behavior is congruent with “who I am,” it is easier to maintain over time. [RESEARCH HERE]

In this framework, “being” simply means alignment between how you think, how you feel, what you choose, and how you act.

Old identity, heavy in MUD, might sound like this:

“I am the stressed-out person who uses food to cope.”
“I am the partner who always gets abandoned.”
“I am the one who can make money but can’t keep it.”

From there, you can white-knuckle a diet, a budget, or a new boundary for a while. But sooner or later, the internal identity pulls you back into orbit.

When Essentia leads, your self-talk starts shifting into things like:

“I am someone who turns my pain into service.”
“I am the kind of person who tells the truth, even when my voice shakes.”
“I am learning to treat my body as an ally because other people need me at my best.”

From there, the question is no longer “How do I force myself to stick to this habit?”

It becomes, “What does someone like this naturally do with food, money, relationships, time?”

That is the pivot. You stop trying to build a new life onto an old identity. You build a new identity, then let it dictate the life.

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Practical Takeaway

Here is a simple starting ritual to move from MUD into Essentia. Do not turn this into homework hell. Treat it like a conversation with yourself.

Sit down with a notebook and answer four questions in your own words:

1. What is my story?
   Write the truth, not the polished version. Where have you actually struggled in health, love, money, work, belonging? Where do you keep seeing the same scene, just with different characters and scenery?

2. What have I learned?
   For each painful chapter, name at least one piece of earned wisdom. A boundary you would never cross again. A pattern you now see earlier. A value that sharpened under pressure.

3. What can I teach?
   You do not need a degree or a platform. Ask, “If someone I loved was walking into the same pattern I barely survived, what would I want them to know?” That is curriculum.

4. What can I create from this?
   This might be a conversation. A letter. A podcast. A local support group. A program. A parenting shift. A new way of dating. Something concrete where your hurt person becomes a helper.

Then, for the next week, watch yourself with the backpack metaphor in mind.

When you feel triggered, ask quietly:

“Right now, am I carrying this as villain, victim, or victor?”

No judgment. Just notice. Awareness is the doorway out of the conditioning phase. Each time you catch yourself, you create a crack in the cement where something new can grow.

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Closing Thought

Most people look at their life and quietly decide,

“This is just the way I am…. The ABCs of me baby!”

They keep trying to rearrange habits on top of an identity written by a scared, overwhelmed younger self. Every New Year is a new coat of paint on the same cracked wall.

You are allowed to choose something different.

Not by pretending the past was “meant” to happen. I do not buy that.

Things happen.
People fail you.
You fail people.
Life hits harder than feels fair.

You do not have to pretend any of that was for the best.

But you do get to choose what it becomes.

You can let your backpack turn you into a villain who keeps hurting…
a victim who keeps reliving…
or a victor who learns, teaches, and quietly changes the gravitational field of every room you enter.

You are not here to be clean and untouched. You are here to be used, in the best sense of that word… to take the exact bricks you were handed and build something you would be proud to leave behind.

That is Essentia.
That is identity work.
That is what real change looks like.

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PS: If you are ready to break free of the identity patterns that keep you looping the same year on repeat, and become the kind of person who naturally lives, leads, and loves from Essentia, explore my Next Level Human coaching program today. Spots are limited… don’t wait. 👉 http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/human-coaching

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References.

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. New York, NY: International Universities Press. Wiley Online Library+1

Chand, S. P., & Kuckel, D. P. (2023). Cognitive behavior therapy. In StatPearls. Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls Publishing. NCBI

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. Wiley Online Library+2Open Research Surrey+2

McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238. SAGE Journals+2Studeersnel+2

Xu, X. (2020). The importance of self-concept and self-expansion in understanding health and behavior change. In B. A. Mattingly (Ed.), Interpersonal relationships and the self-concept (pp. 163–176). New York, NY: Springer. researchgate.net+1